Kanazawa Seaside Town about 60 years ago and today

History of Kanazawa Seaside Town

In the 1974-78 photograph, the right half of the frame is dazzlingly white. There are only a handful of buildings, and on the sand-colored flat ground only the lines dividing the lots have been drawn. It is land just made by filling in the sea, and its state with nothing on it yet is captured as it is. In the same area as of 2026, factories with blue roofs are packed into the full extent of the blocks, and on their west side residential buildings form rows aligned in the same direction. The town called Kanazawa Seaside Town began from this white flat ground.

A shore where hills press toward the sea

The oldest era that can be traced back at this location is 1945-50. In the wide band on the right side of the frame no photograph is available, and it is left blank in pale gray. In the left half that is shown, the hills press right up to the sea. Ridges and valleys are finely interwoven, and dark surfaces of woods and bright surfaces of fields are lined up in a patchwork. A white road runs north-south along the bottom of a valley, and in the upper left and the middle of the left side there are urban areas with straight streets. The shoreline runs diagonally through the center of the frame, and from there the upper right and lower right are water. Slightly above the center there is a small inlet, and to its south a long, narrow cape projects into the sea. Near the center a small piece of land like an island floats, and a thin straight structure crosses to it.

Notice the lower part of the center. There is a bright lot leveled flat, with large buildings lined up regularly and three or four round structures grouped together. In this terrain where the hills press toward the sea, flat land is scarce, and the little low ground there was got used first.

By 1961-69, the use of that low ground becomes denser. To the left of the center, a site where long buildings are lined up in rows spreads widely, and to its southeast round structures gather densely and look like a swarm of black dots. The shape of the shoreline has hardly changed. This means the stage of using the land while adding flat ground on the inside of the shore was continuing. In the upper middle of the frame, surfaces of sand exposed at low tide spread along the shore as bright patches. This brightness shows that the sea was shallow far out. The water offshore is dark, with thin streaks of waves running diagonally. In this photograph too, a triangle on the right side is cut off by a diagonal seam, and the area beyond it is left blank in gray. The water from the center to the far right later becomes the land that carries factories and housing.

The time of the white flat ground

The work started in the 1970s. On the sea at Kanazawa, the City of Yokohama placed a plan to prepare, in one place, a relocation destination for factories scattered inland and a new residential area. The 1974-78 photograph captures that development in full progress. Everything from the center of the frame to the lower right is sand-colored bare ground, with only straight lot lines and a few roads faintly drawn. Hollows where water remains are dotted about as dark patches, and the color of the soil varies in shade from place to place. At the boundary with the sea, the white line of a seawall continues south with bends, and dark green water lies outside it.

At this point buildings stand in only two places. In the upper right corner of the frame, an industrial block with grid-like streets is already complete, with red and brown roofs densely lined up. A straight road like an embankment leading across to it crosses the upper part of the frame. The other place is near the center, where only a few buildings with red roofs and blue roofs are grouped together. It is the stage at which roofs are moving in here and there where lots and roads have been laid, a photograph that lays bare the order of the development. The left half is unchanged, hillside woods and residential areas, and to the left of the center a few long, narrow water surfaces remain.

Factories and homes side by side

In the 1979-83 photograph, the flat ground that was white is almost filled in. From the right half to the lower half of the frame, buildings with blue roofs and white roofs crowd into the grid blocks, and factories and warehouses of even size line up lot by lot. On the other hand, the area from the center to the upper left looks different. Long, narrow residential buildings form rows aligned in the same direction, and between them are placed brown rectangles that look like school sports grounds. The design that separated the places to work from the places to live with a line appears as differences in the shape and arrangement of the roofs. The wide band running vertically through the center is a trunk road, and this band forms the boundary between the two zones.

By 1987-90, a new line is added within that band. A thin structure runs vertically alongside the road, and toward the top of the center a white, long, narrow structure can be seen. The Kanazawa Seaside Line opened in 1989, and a means of transport running north-south through the reclaimed land came through. The individual stations are hard to make out, but you can follow how the track fits within the band. The industrial blocks are even more packed with buildings, and the share of blue roofs has increased. On the housing side, the number of residential buildings has increased, and toward the top of the center a round, earth-colored sports ground has appeared. Small white dots float on the sea, showing that boats are out.

In the photograph as of 2026, the amount of green has visibly increased. Trees have grown in the residential blocks, and a band of green runs diagonally, linking parks and ponds. To the left of the center there is a baseball field with a fan shape of earth, and to its north school sports grounds line up. The industrial blocks keep their density as the colors of the roofs change, and in the upper right corner a cluster of round tanks, large warehouses and cranes attached to the quay can be seen. Toward the top of the center there is a long, narrow site where many tracks are bundled together, a cluster that reads as a facility for keeping rolling stock. Set it beside the same place that was sand-colored in 1974-78, and the accumulation of about 50 years of adding a town onto white paper can be seen at a glance.

If you look at the height of the piled soil, the flatness of this land shows up in the numbers too. The central measuring point is 3.4 m, the point toward the south 3.2 m, the point toward the west also 3.2 m, and the point toward the east slightly lower at 2.3 m. But only the point toward the north takes a negative value, -0.8 m. When the end of a cross-section reaches the water's edge, it can pick up the height on the water side rather than the surface of the fill. The edge of the flat surface meets the water. The hazard maps that the City of Yokohama publishes ward by ward are the quickest way to look up how far water is expected to come on land made by filling in the sea.

The record of land values remains outside the reclaimed land, at the foot of the hills. A residential site in Nagahama 1-chome, about 1.1 km away, was 187,000 yen per square meter in 2006. It rose to 202,000 yen in 2008, turned downward from there, hit its bottom in the record up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji) at 182,000 yen in 2012 and 2013, and had come back to 192,000 yen in 2025. In the 2026 publication it is 194,000 yen. It is not the value of the reclaimed land itself, but it gives a guide to how the inland side moved after factories and housing moved onto the sea side. The nearest station is Sachiura Station on the Kanazawa Seaside Line, and the line itself is a means of transport laid for this reclaimed land. If you switch through the five past eras from the oldest, the sequence appears side by side: from narrow low ground between the hills, through white flat ground, to a zone for work and a zone for living set down separately.